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BY FLETCHER WORTMANN

In print | March 8, 2007

“Dear Students,
The College is about to launch a planning process designed to set imaginative goals for the Swarthmore of 2025. We have constituted a planning committee to guide that process and, on behalf of that committee, invite your participation from the outset by asking for your thoughts on the following questions:
What is your vision of the Swarthmore of 2025?”

Well, since you asked so nicely, I was able to come up with a few things.

Functional heating in all dormitories, with student-accessible thermostats.

Allow students to spend meals at on-campus establishments other than Sharples and Tarble, and at the co-op.

In order to reduce student stress, replace the fire alarm with something that doesn’t sound like an amorous baleen whale. Possibly, instead, play The Shins’ “Oh, Inverted World,” or selections from the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack by Vince Guaraldi.

Private bathrooms installed in all dormitory rooms (including Willets singles) and walk-in closets.

School-funded go-go dancers present at all Paces parties, as well as at all fraternity parties, Olde Club dances and concerts, large scale events, honors seminars and commencement ceremonies.

Campus shuttles painted with silver and crimson flames, equipped with spinners, LCD displays in the front, rear bumpers and flux capacitors with 1.21 jigawatt capacity.

McCabe Library outfitted with food supplies, moat, and AK-47s in anticipation of inevitable zombie apocalypse.

“Coming Out Week” chalkings replaced by interactive, two-story tall holographic images that scan passerby’s retinas in order to identify and personally proposition them.

Nanotech-powered recycling machines that take in the adhesive mix of sweat, cheap alcohol and Lord-knows-what-else on the Paces floor and convert it, on a subatomic level, into an edible, high-nutrient food substance capable of feeding the entire campus. This concoction will still be better than Sharples.

Annual “Pterodactyl Hunt” event, as a result of uncontrolled cloning and genetic experimentation, becomes a necessary and often deadly part of campus life.

Academic standards increased to the point that admission process duplicates government population-control methods featured in film “Battle Royale.”

Swarthmore Ville high school students displaced by motorcycle thugs who engage in gang warfare on college property and commune with secret government genetic projects, causing them to develop god-like telekinetic powers and mutate into hideous techno-organic monstrosities.

Increased campus housing, with new names including “New^5 Dorm,” “Westphal,” “Alice Paul II: The Reckoning,” as well as “Project Avalon,” an orbiting space station with pinpoint nuclear-strike capabilities, and “Fortress Maximus,” a full-size, functional replica of the “Transformers” character of the same name.

Faculty expanded to include Umberto Eco, Harold Bloom, Stephen Hawking in atomic robot armor; Nikola Tesla either resurrected or portrayed by David Bowie, Charles Xavier, Obi-Wan Kenobi, a collectively intelligent swarm of genetically enhanced bees and a thousand cyborg clones of current senior Jon Petkun ’07.

Ninjas.

Robotic dinosaurs of all kinds.

Campus-wide wireless Internet.

Space pirates.

A school environment that, instead of developing students’ low self-esteem and encouraging suicidal overworking with self-destructive hedonism, promotes engaged learning and healthy lifestyle choices while allowing students plentiful free time and stimulating them to be creative, engaged thinkers instead of soulless intellectual masochists.

But then, that seems to be asking a bit much, doesn’t it? I’m sorry. Never mind. Forget I said anything. I’m sure the place is fine the way it is.

Fletcher is a sophomore. You can reach him at fwortma1@swarthmore.edu.

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